The present invention relates to a self-service terminal (SST), such as an automated teller machine (ATM), for displaying advertisements. In particular, the invention relates to an ATM for displaying authorized advertisements during a transaction.
Owners of ATMs sometimes attempt to offset the high cost of owning and maintaining an ATM by renting out screen space to a third party, such as a vendor, for displaying advertisements for the goods and/or services provided by the third party. Vendors lease screen space because it enables them to advertise their goods and/or services to ATM users without having the expense of owning and maintaining an ATM.
Typically, screen space is rented out during a “dead time” in a transaction. A “dead time” is a period during which a user is not required to enter any data or to view any data, but during which the ATM is occupied, for example, when a financial transaction is being authorized by an ATM host, when cash is being counted and staged, when a receipt is being printed, or such like.
One problem associated with renting out screen space to vendors is that the ATM application that controls the flow of screens presented to a user of the ATM is very complex. This makes it very difficult and time consuming to modify the ATM application to include an advertisement in a screen. As a result, owners of ATMs are reluctant to allow the vendors to change their advertisements too frequently. For some vendors, the goods or services that they advertise via the ATM may have limited availability, or the price of the goods and/or services may change frequently. This means that it may not be convenient to advertise the goods and/or services as part of a long term advertisement. Other vendors are small businesses who may not be able to afford the expense involved in incorporating an advertisement in the ATM application.
Another problem is that the same advertisement is used for every user of the ATM, regardless of the location of the ATM, the time at which the ATM is being used, and such like.